Ho-hum...

I was in an imponderably baffling situation a couple of weeks ago. It was a situation I didn’t think too much about at the time, although the actual extent of the farce became clearer after a few days passed. Names will not be named. This post is being written with nothing more in mind than the hope that someone can explain the, erm, what shall we say – the opaque thinking of the person I spoke with.

I suppose this has happened to most photographers, and more than once as well, but here goes. An eminent figure within the hospitality industry offered me a photographic job, providing fresh images for their brochure. In exchange for the images, I would have been paid… well, let’s simply say I would have been credited in the brochure and given the opportunity to cover future events held at the venue. The unpaid opportunity, might I add. The benefit of this, you ask? I would be allowed to keep any money I generated, selling images from these events to the guests in attendance.

I know, I know…

I enquired as to why the venue in question, given its reputable standing throughout East Anglia, would fail to set aside even the faintest whiff of a budget for such an important task as renewing their brochure. My thoughts on the logic of being paid in further unpaid work, which might or might not eventually be remunerated by people with no connection to the venue whatsoever, remained private.

‘We do have an in-house team of creatives who would normally do it’, was the reply, ‘but they’re busy at the moment, and we’d like the photography done soon. Furthermore, there are a lot of photographers who are interested in doing it, so we don’t see the need to set aside money.’

Right. So. Apparently it’s perfectly acceptable for a company not just to drive down the cost of a professional photographer, on the grounds of the job having many possible candidates, but to completely eliminate it - and then attempt to save face by stating that other people might make the job worthwhile if the photographer continues working for them. Come on. Photographers aren’t that thick. It is the equivalent of buying a new television, and saying ‘well, I shan’t pay for this, but I will recommend you to a friend, and they might buy one.’

I have my own thoughts on the principle of this. If you implicitly attempt to choke an industry by refusing to pay a penny for a photographic project like that – not even peanuts – then you will without doubt end up with the quality you deserve.

I await the results of the venue’s blinkered thinking with quite some degree of anticipation. Unless can anyone elaborate on why people make such strange offers as these…?